Welcome back to a new school year! As school buses roll down our local streets, high school stadiums light up on Friday nights, and students return to our schools, there’s nothing like fall in Iowa.

This past spring, significant legislative changes impacted K-12 education in Iowa, including House File 2612, also known as the “AEA bill,” which has drastically altered how AEAs are funded. Before July 1, Iowa’s AEAs operated for 50 years under an “economy of scale” model. This system pooled funds to purchase services and personnel, which were then shared among all school districts in a region, ensuring that children, families and educators had equal access to essential resources.

Under the new funding system, which gradually reduces guaranteed funding for general education resources such as classroom materials and specialized teacher training (as well as 10% of special education funding), Iowa’s AEAs are now required to market these services to school districts who must purchase them with the funds previously earmarked for AEA support.

Now that we are into the 2024-25 school year, how is this new approach working? Many school districts have been able to purchase a majority of the same general education services they have used in the past while most urban school districts have even had a surplus of funds that they have used to create new positions or direct toward other priorities. However, many rural school districts have struggled to afford the general education services they once relied on.

On the special education side, school districts still receive 100% of the services they had access to previously for the 2024-25 school year. However, due to staff shortages, some AEA team members are balancing higher caseloads. If you’re a parent or guardian of a student with special needs, please know that during this transition, our agency remains committed to providing your child with the support and services they deserve. We are focusing our resources to ensure students and families receive the direct services they need during this time.

If you’re a parent of a general education student, the AEA services available to your child in 2024-25 will depend largely on what your local school district has purchased from the AEA. This year, we are using reserve funds to keep all services available. However, by 2025-26, some AEA services may unfortunately be discontinued if not enough school districts purchase them to maintain the necessary staff. (This is where the previous economy of scale model had a clear advantage. By pooling resources, we were able to offer a wide range of specialized services that could meet the diverse needs of all districts, regardless of size.)

As a statewide system of nine AEAs, we are collaborating closely with each other, local school districts and the Iowa Department of Education to implement the requirements of HF 2612. We remain committed to cooperation, transparency and accountability throughout this process and will continue to provide updates as we move forward. Please know that service to students, families and educators remains at the core of all that we do.

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Stan Rheingans is the interim chief administrator of Central Rivers AEA, with offices in Cedar Falls, Clear Lake and Marshalltown. He is also the chief administrator of Keystone AEA, based in Elkader. He can be reached at srheingans@centralriversaea.org. Central Rivers AEA serves over 5,000 K-12 educators in 18 counties of north central Iowa to improve outcomes for over 60,000 students. Learn more at www.centralriversaea.org.